


We've Got Fifty Good Years Left To Spend Out In The Garden

by readbetweenthelions



Category: Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, Teen Wolf (TV), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Domestic, F/M, Older!Lydia, Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-12
Updated: 2012-10-12
Packaged: 2017-11-16 04:33:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/535541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/readbetweenthelions/pseuds/readbetweenthelions
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bruce and Lydia have finally settled down.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We've Got Fifty Good Years Left To Spend Out In The Garden

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jessicamiriamdrew](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jessicamiriamdrew/gifts).



> Crossover fic! Bruce Banner/Older!Lydia Martin. (Lydia’s post-doctorate, so probably around 26.) Ultra fluffy, just for Bonnie. This is the perfect crossover otp and no one can convince me otherwise.

To Bruce, Lydia is the most person-y _person_ he’s ever met. Everything she does, it just shines out of her like sunshine, like fire burning somewhere and leaking light out of cracks here and there. She’s a little engine, her mind and body constantly churning away. One second it’s mathematics, all equations and variables, and the next it’s red-lipsticked kisses on the corner of his mouth, his stubble scratching the velvet of her skin. Her red hair tickles his neck when they lay in bed and the heat of her body pressed against his washes over him in waves.

“Bruce,” she calls, voice high and clear, like the chiming of bells. She’s outside, and the thought of it tears Bruce’s attention away from the papers that lay scattered in front of him on the kitchen table. He can see it in his mind - the summer afternoon sun making her hair glow orange, fire burning in his brain. “Bruce, is there any lemonade left?”

“Yeah,” he replies, dropping his pen with a faint clatter on the table. He turns to face the door, where she’ll come in from the porch, back-lit with sunlight, like an angel. “I made some earlier.”

“Could you bring me some?”

There used to be a time when Bruce wouldn’t have left his work for a request like this, when the facts and figures in front of him would have been much more important. But that was before Lydia. Lydia, who was his everything, the girl who made him whole again. “Of course,” he says. He stands and crosses to the fridge, then puts a few ice cubes in a glass and fills it with lemonade.

Bruce pushes the screen door open with one shoulder. From where he stands on the deck, he can see Lydia pruning her prized wolf’s bane plants. When they were planning what she wanted in her garden (and it was her garden – Bruce was a genius, but he didn’t have Lydia’s green thumbs) Bruce had been confused about the wolf’s bane. It didn’t fit in with the other roses and bushes she’d requested. When he’d asked, she’d simply said they reminded her of someone. Bruce hadn’t asked after that, really. If she wanted him to know, she would have told him. She always did.

She is stooped slightly, snipping dead flowers and leaves off the plants gently. Everything about her is beautiful colors - her yellow sunhat, the green of their yard, the white of her sundress, the purple-blue of wolf’s bane, and the fire-orange of her hair. A breeze licks a few strands around her face, and she tucks them behind her ear with a deft and garden-gloved hand.

Lydia hears him coming, ice clattering in the glass, and she turns to face him. She smiles, her face dappled with sunlight. “Thanks,” she says as Bruce draws close. She holds out a hand for the glass and Bruce slips it carefully into her hand, her fingers curling around it carefully. “What were you working on?” she asks. The red bow of her mouth looks inviting as ever, and he wants to kiss her. She sips the lemonade carefully, almost teasingly.

“Particle acceleration,” Bruce says. It’s vague, but she’ll see the calculations when she comes in later - she’ll probably pick up the gist quicker than he did, and given a few moments she’ll have figured out that bit he’s been working on for an hour…

“Fun,” Lydia says. She teases him about it, about how buried he gets in his work, though she sometimes does the same. When she was finishing her doctoral thesis, Bruce didn’t see her for three days.

“It is,” Bruce retorts. The wind shifts, blowing from behind her towards Bruce, and he can smell her scent faintly. It’s strawberries and the fragrance of her skin, without all the fancy perfumes she likes so much, and he sometimes prefers this – just _her_ , all sunshine and sultry redheaded charms. She’s half done with her lemonade already, and Bruce slips it carefully out of her grasp and sets it on the ground, making sure it’s securely supported by the grass that he should probably cut soon. He grabs her wrist gently and pulls her close to him.

Lydia wraps her soft arms around Bruce’s neck, a little chuckle in her throat. Bruce feels the bump of her stomach, four months pregnant, between them. He presses her closer, hands on her waist, and she smiles.

“I wasn’t finished with that,” Lydia says, meaning the lemonade.

“Shhh,” Bruce says, putting a finger softly over her lips. Even after all this time, it’s still a strange contrast, his skin against hers – the tan born of work and years on the run against natural fairness. “How’s the wolf’s bane?”

She glances back at it. “Flourishing,” she grins, white teeth showing through the red of her favorite lipstick. Lydia lifts herself onto her tiptoes, the height difference much more pronounced because of her sandaled feet, lacking her usual fortitude-testing heels. She kisses him soft and sweet, still tasting of lemonade.

“I’m glad,” Bruce says when she pulls away a moment later. “They look beautiful. Like you.”

“Thanks, Bruce,” she says. “You’re not so bad yourself. Even though you didn’t shower today.” She twists one of his curls around her finger.

Sometimes, Bruce wonders how he managed to find someone like Lydia. Every inch of her is perfect, at least for him. Sometimes he wonders what she saw in him that made her think he deserved her. She’s said things like, “your brains” or “the way you take your glasses off when you’re sad” or “because I like older men”, but Bruce thinks that even if it were a combination of all those things she’s said and more, that still wouldn’t be enough.

“I love you,” she says, drawing a thumb along his sandpaper jawline. Bruce thinks about how their kid is going to have her shiny brown eyes, and if they’re lucky, her beautiful red hair. He pictures a tiny version of her, running around this yard in a tiny version of her sundress, and he almost shivers. He can hardly wait.

“I love you, too,” he mutters. He presses his face into her hair and he can feel her heartbeat against him as they stand in the sun.

“I’m going to finish my lemonade now,” Lydia says after a while, and steps away from him. She makes to stoop and pick the glass up herself, but Bruce beats her to it.

“I guess I’ll finish my calculations, then,” Bruce says. It’s odd to think about – one minute he was working on equations, and the next he’s standing in the sunlight with the love of his life. It won’t be as easy to switch back.

“Do them out here,” she asks. She pulls a pine needle out of his hair, fallen, no doubt, from the pine tree that towered over them. “I like to watch you work.”

“Anything for you,” he says. She kisses him one more time, and he retreats inside to gather up his work, knowing that he won’t get any more work done today. How could he, when he had the chance to watch her all day?


End file.
